Save the Date #2: “Designing the Ditch” – Connecting Pasadena (CPP) Visioning Workshop
NEW STORIES. 50 years ago, the state seized a gigantic swath of valuable land in the center of Pasadena, and demolished thousands of people’s property in order to build the planned extension of the 710 freeway. Countless stories of individual Pasadenans who were affected by this seizure are rooted in that land. When the state razed those properties, it built a barren road, now called the 710 stub and then, stopped. That valuable land, full of stories, lies largely vacant, dormant, silent, dead. Now, it is being awakened. What new stories will be told?
BRAINSTORMING IDEAS. Renowned architect and urbanist Stefanos Polyzoides will lead two sequential visioning workshops Saturday, October 25 and Saturday, November 8, 9-noon at Maranatha High School. Transportation, economic and land use experts will provide information and answer questions. They will lay the foundation upon which citizens’ ideas can be integrated to turn this fallow land into an economically and aesthetically viable district of Pasadena.
IMPLICATIONS:
- As it currently exists, the 710 stub needlessly cuts off Pasadena in two by an unsightly ditch.
- Metro has a proposal to transform this “ditch” into the exit point of a 4.9 mile long tunnel will bring 8 lanes of car and truck traffic into the 134/210 interchange, immediately adjacent to Old Pasadena.
- We can do better! Let’s work together to transform this 36 acre, 25 feet deep ditch into an area of beauty and value for Pasadena:
- What should we place there?
- What economic and transportation challenges will it pose?
- How can we make it viable, beautiful, useful, and vibrant?
- How can we knit it seamlessly into its surroundings?
- The product will be a draft master plan based on your ideas from the workshop.
- Connecting Pasadena Plan and the tunnel are mutually exclusive—one or the other.
- The CPP would be managed and built by Pasadenans for Pasadena.
- The CPP would eliminate the tunnel’s uncertainty, trucks, pollution, noise, and gridlock.
- The CPP could mean long-term LOCAL jobs, not imported workers who are gone in 10 years.
- The CPP could be phased, not a decade-long continuous excavation and construction
- The CPP would not cost California taxpayers $5.6 billion.
To Sign up for a workshop, send an email to: DPNAlist+RSVP@gmail.com
Other freeway removal projects
